Breakfast with Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum takes his coffee black and ignores the pastry spread. He’s here, at Bistro Bis, a French restaurant on Capitol Hill, not just to mingle with reporters, but to send a message. Later today, he’ll speak on the steps of the Supreme Court, which will soon hear arguments about President Obama’s health-care law, and he wants to remind the press that he, not Mitt Romney, is best positioned to carry the anti-Obamacare torch.

But that pitch, from the outset, is muffled by the latest Beltway buzz. Santorum, after winning the Louisiana primary over the weekend, became immersed in a war of words with the New York Times, whose political reporter, Jeff Zeleny, challenged the former senator about his remarks.